Bringing Broadway's incredible musicians from the pit to the stage!
Cenovia Cummins, violin
Cenovia Cummins is the concertmaster of The New York Pops, Riverside Symphony, and School of American Ballet Orchestra. She has served as concertmaster for other orchestras including Eos, Roanoke Symphony, Naumberg Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, and American Ballet Theater. She is also an active chamber musician having played with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Grand Canyon, and Moab Music Festivals.
Cenovia has recorded for or appeared on the David Letterman Show, Saturday Night Live, VH1, Good Morning America and Conan O'Brien backing up artists such as Tony Bennett, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Madonna, Sheryl Crow, James Taylor, Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, Diana Krall, P. Diddy, Rod Stewart, Michael Jackson, among others.
As associate concertmaster she has toured three times with Barbra Streisand. Cenovia has also held chairs on many Broadway shows including American Idiot, Beauty and the Beast, Ragtime, Big River, Guys and Dolls, Cry Baby, City of Angels, Fiddler on the Roof, Bonnie and Clyde, Ghost, and many others. Cenovia's violin solos have been featured in the major motion pictures Lovely and Amazing and more recently in the film Julie and Julia. She also has two feature violin solos on Nellie Mckay's 2009 CD release Normal as Blueberry Pie, a tribute to Doris Day. She has been featured many times in the New York City Ballet’s "Red Angels" for four dancers and solo electric violin.
Cenovia plays on a violin made in 1716 by Giovanni Grancino of Milan and violin bows made by contemporary bow makers, Michael Yeats and Jean Luc Tauziede.
Carla Fabiani, viola
Carla is very excited to be joining the orchestra of Les Miserables on Broadway this month as well as the 2015 Radio City - Christmas Spectacular orchestra. Carla loves opera and has held positions with Palm Beach Opera, Sarasota Opera, Connecticut Grand Opera, Binghamton Opera, and the Austin Lyric Opera. She had tons of fun playing on the recent Broadway revival of Bernstein's On the Town. At present, she also plays with the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of the American Ballet Theater.
Carla also plays regularly with rock artist Kishi Bashi, and has joined the string sections accompanying Jay-Z at Carnegie Hall, Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night Live, and with Adele at the 2009 Grammy Awards and MTV Unplugged.
Carla was a full scholarship recipient of Carnegie Mellon's Masters Degree Program and she is currently the head of the string program at Rodeph Sholom School in Manhattan.
Laura Bontrager, cello
Laura Bontrager received her bachelor's and master's degrees at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Lorne Munroe and Joel Krosnick as a William Randolph Hearst Foundation and Leonard Rose Memorial Scholar. Her commitment to contemporary music began with her well-received North American premiere of Richard Barrett's Ne songe plus à fuir for solo cello at Juilliard's Focus! Festival, and continued in featured performances of works by Roger Sessions and John Tavener with the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.
Ms. Bontrager has appeared with a wide variety of orchestras and chamber ensembles, in jazz and popular settings, on Broadway, and frequently in solo recital. She has performed with Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin, Bernadette Peters, Elvis Costello, and she has recorded on the RCA Victor and Sony Classical labels, among others.
Most recently, Laura recorded David Wolfson's Sonata for Cello and Piano on the Albany Records album 17 Windows. Ms. Bontrager is a longtime member of the cello quartet CELLO, the Aurasuono Trio, and regularly performs with the Springfield [MA] Symphony and American Modern Ensemble. She is a certified Suzuki teacher and is a faculty member at Manhattan's Diller-Quaile School of Music and the Chapin School.
Ms. Bontrager has been a member of several Broadway orchestras including The Producers, Young Frankenstein, A Tale of Two Cities, Rageime, Promises, Promises, Follies, and is currently a member of the Broadway orchestra for Les Misérables.